The response Pakistan needs is not a single dramatic gesture. It is a sustained, simultaneous campaign across three fronts – and encouragingly, some movement on each front is already discernible, even if the pace and coordination can be strengthened.
The legal front. Pakistan should press its case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the World Bank, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Watercourses Convention – not sequentially, but in parallel. The IWT’s mechanisms allow Pakistan to initiate arbitration proceedings without India’s consent. A 2025 ruling by the Court of Arbitration already upheld key aspects of Pakistan’s water rights. These are not symbolic gestures; they build an international legal record that constrains India’s freedom of action and lays the groundwork for eventual enforcement.
The diplomatic front. Pakistan must internationalise this crisis with greater urgency and strategic coherence. The Gulf states depend substantially on Pakistani agricultural exports and have compelling reasons to support Pakistan’s water infrastructure. China, which itself faces upstream water pressure from India on the Brahmaputra, is a natural diplomatic partner. The UN General Assembly provides the appropriate venue for Pakistan to frame India’s unilateral suspension of an internationally-brokered treaty as a challenge to the global rules-based order. A coalition of riparian states – Nepal, Bangladesh, and China – is a natural formation around shared interests.
The domestic front. This is where the greatest urgency lies, and where focused political commitment can yield the most immediate results. Canal lining, drip irrigation, groundwater regulation, and crop diversification away from water-intensive varieties are not peripheral improvements. They are survival imperatives. Pakistan loses more water through systemic inefficiency every year than India could realistically divert through its planned infrastructure – a sobering reality that also represents a genuine opportunity.
There is a tendency in Pakistani public discourse to frame the water crisis either as an intractable geopolitical problem or as a sufficiently distant threat that does not yet demand immediate attention. Both framings are misreadings of the situation.
There is a tendency in Pakistani public discourse to frame the water crisis either as an intractable geopolitical problem or as a sufficiently distant threat that does not yet demand immediate attention. Both framings are misreadings of the situation.
It is not intractable. International water law provides usable mechanisms. Domestic reform is achievable. Regional diplomacy has succeeded in the past – the IWT itself was negotiated between nations that had recently fought a war. Where political will can be mobilised, pathways exist.
And it is not distant. The farmers of Sahiwal and Gujranwala are already registering the effects of India’s upstream manipulation. By the time the new diversion tunnels are operational, the crisis will not be approaching – it will have arrived.
The Chenab has sustained human life in this part of the world since before recorded history. The Harappan civilisation and the Mughal gardens of Lahore were nourished by its tributaries. The green revolution that transformed Pakistan’s agriculture in the twentieth century was built on canals fed by this river. To allow an upstream adversary to gradually diminish that inheritance – through tunnels, dams, and deliberate treaty abeyance – without the most vigorous and coordinated resistance would represent a profound failure of statecraft.
This is not merely a water dispute. It is a question of Pakistan’s capacity to feed its people, sustain its energy supply, and maintain the economic foundations of sovereignty in the decades ahead. The answer depends, more than most Pakistanis yet appreciate, on what happens in those mountains – and on the choices Pakistan makes right now.
The writer is a former Engineer-in-Chief, PhD in Finance (investment in fragile economies and weak institutions). He can be reached at [email protected].